Today I’d like to focus on one of my own weak spots when it comes to stories, and that is friendship. Because as much as I love a good romance, I think it’s equally important for a story to have great, epic friendships.

Great friendships can carry a story and warm the heart just as well, if not more so than a romance can. They are so important and usually books that feature friendships turn out to be some of my all time favorites. So that’s why today’s post features some of my favorite fictional BFF’s and friend groups. Let me know if you have any other recommendation for books featuring friendships!

One of my favorite duologies of all time is the Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo. It’s a story about six outcasts coming together to pull off an impossible heist. You perhaps wouldn’t expect this lovely quote about love and who earns your heart from such a book, but it only shows the gloriousness that is Six of Crows.

I for one totally agree with this quote as I think getting to know someone, getting to know the real them, is so much more important in a relationship than any kind of material thing.

In honor of Thanksgiving week in the US, today is all about being thankful. More specifically, what books we are thankful for.

Now, I’m thankful for a lot of books. For lots of reasons. So narrowing this down was… tough. I decided to split it into categories as to why I am thankful for a book in particular, which came a little easier for me. But I would just like to note that some of these books definitely fit into more than one categorie. And I am probably forgetting a lot of books as well. But anyway, here it goes!

Today’s all about the books I’d love to read with my future children. To be honest, my knowledge about children’s books is rather limited because A) I don’t have any kids yet so I’m not yet in the habit of reading children’s books with them and B) I myself mostly read books by Belgian authors as a kid which will probably not be that known to you. For those reasons I decided to broaden the age of those (hypothetical) children from kid to young adult and present you a list of books I’d want them to read for a variety of reasons.

Today’s Top Ten is all about books that I struggled to get into. Now, beginnings are something I usually struggle with. As much as I love reading a new story and getting to know new characters, the beginning is almost always a struggle.

I start reading and find I have to force myself to continue reading. But usually when I’m reading and get a few chapters in (this can be from the 2nd or third chapter, but it can also be about halfway the book), I start getting invested in the story and attached to the characters. And THAT’s when I switch from forcing myself to read to really enjoying a book. And this struggle with beginnings is something that’s a ME-thing, not a BOOK-thing. Because some books or series that have become my all-time favorites started as a book I was really struggling to get into.

Today’s post is all about recommendations, and I specifically want to talk about books I’d recommend to casual readers. What do I mean by casual readers? I mean those people who pick up a book maybe two to three times a year (probably on their vacation). The readers who like reading, but don’t consider it a favorite way to pass the time. Most people I know IRL are either non-reader, or a casual reader. So if they don’t read that many books, I’d still recommend them to read these books below.

Let’s be real, if you’re reading my blog, you’re most likely a fellow bookworm. And I LOVE recommending books to my fellow bookworms and getting recommendations back. But the chances that I can recommend a book to one of you fellow bookworms that you a) haven’t heard of yet or b) haven’t already read yourself are pretty slim. It doesn’t always have the same satisfaction as recommending a book to a casual reader and having them fall absolutely head over heels in love with it.

So this is my recommendation post for all you casual readers out there! (And of course I secretly do hope one of these will turn you in a super bookworm…)

Hi guys, and welcome to a new Top Ten Tuesday! Today’s a freebie, so I thought I’d take this time to talk about some of my all-time favorite fictional character crushes!

One of the most important things for me when reading a book or hearing a story are the characters. I crush on fictional characters all the time. In fact, if I don’t fall in love with any of the characters, chances are I don’t like the book as much, no matter the writing or plot. I NEED to feel things for the characters. I NEED to fall in love with them for some reason. I NEED to be thinking about certain characters long after finishing the book or turning off the tv.

So, while this list is soo much longer than ten (but hey, we’ve got to start somewhere), I give you a list of the first ten characters that came to mind when I thought about fictional crushes. This list will contain characters from books as well as from TV or movies. And, to limit myself a bit more, I chose only one character per series, though this was quite hard in some cases as well.

Hi guys, and welcome to a new Top Ten Tuesday. Today is all about the visuals, because even if we are super imaginative and can perfectly envision everything we read (eh, not always), it’s always nice to just look at beautiful art.

So I would like to talk about a few of my favorite fan artists today. These are artists who are just like us, as in they love to obsess over books. Except, they also have the amazing talent to draw the characters and scenes so beautifully.

Of course, all art belongs to the artists! If you click on the name you will go to their DeviantArt or Tumblr sites where you can see all their art. Be sure to always credit them!

Well, what do you know. As bad a year as 2016 has been, I can honestly say I’ve read a ton of amazing books. The reading year has been the absolute best.

So… HOW DO YOU EVER EXPECT ME TO PICK ONLY TEN? You can’t. I can’t. So I didn’t. Also, I totally cheated and included complete series. Because I often binge-read complete series and HOW COULD ANYONE EXPECT ME TO PICK JUST ONE OF THEM?

So anyway, these are the books I’ve read in 2016 (not all released in 2016 because I am way behind on books and will forever be catching up) that I enjoyed the most. In no particular order.